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The Free Software Foundation is having a video contest on the subject "Why is free software important to you?" It's a timely topic, with Windows 7 just out and with the free software community's bickering so bitter as of late that common goals sometimes seem in danger of being forgotten.

Matt Asay, CNET New's columnist on the business and politics of open source, takes new comers and the nostalgic among us on a retrospective of just how far the FOSS community has come over the past few years, paralleling his own introduction to and involvement in the community. A good introduction to FOSS for beginners and a good indicator of how far we've come and what we've yet to accomplish.

James Hall is a very experienced software and system engineer who is probably best known for creating and maintaining the freeDOS project for several years. James is eminently qualified to provide an oriention to FOSS and to discuss its sometimes obvious and sometimes rather nuanced significance.

I wanted to show you some real world examples of how successful women in IT and FOSS in particular think about the gender issue. These women are not some gray, anonymous, unsubstantiated array of possible FOSS participants, but real life women who have their own ideas and ideals.

The other day I wrote an article about the right and wrong ways to bring a user to the Linux world. I stand by my position there, namely that as an IT professional, even if someone’s not ready to embrace Linux as their desktop OS of choice, I still will recommend it down the road… but not until someone is truly ready to take that plunge.

Do you want to remove that Windows or Apple logo from your Linux-powered netbook or laptop? If you do then you may as well replace it with some cool graphics that would stand out. To spare you from the hassles of creating you own or searching the web, I recommend that you download the Free Software Sticker Book first.

Here, would everybody like some positive Linux news for a change? The Indian government launches the FOSSEducation initiative. The details are there in the link, but I'd just like to point out a few phrases in the article which, as an American, just taste good to say out loud for a change.

Open Source is getting bigger by the day in India. Success stories such as Tamil Nadu going completely open source, NRCFOSS and CDAC launching Debian based BOSS Linux distribution tailored for India in many Indian languages and the recent steps by Gujarat State Education Board(GSEB) to give 50% weightage to Open Source and Linux in Computer subject across all streams (Science, Commerce and Arts).